Published Paper Details:

Health is a vital moderating factor in a child�s ability to learn. The idea that healthy children learn better is empirically supported and well accepted (Basch, 2010). Many factors influence the academic performance of a child. Some of them are socio-economic status (Sirin, 2005), parental involvement (Fan and Chen, 2001) and a host of other demographic factors. Multiple studies have confirmed that health benefits are associated with physical activity, including cardiovascular and muscular fitness, bone health, psychosocial outcomes and cognitive and brain health (Strong et al., 2005). Brain health is important across the life span, as brain is responsible for both mental processes and physical actions of human body. In adults, brain health, representing absence of disease and optimal structure and function, is measured in terms of quality of life and effective functioning of activities in daily living. In children, brain health is measured in terms of successful development of attention, on-task behaviour, memory and academic performance in an educational setting. Physical activity and fitness plays a vital role in developing the brain during childhood. Children respond faster and with greater accuracy to a variety of cognitive tasks after participating in a session of physical activity. Participating in moderate physical activity is found to increase neural and behavioural concomitants associated with the allocation of attention to a specific cognitive task. In some experimental study, children who participated in 30 minutes of aerobic physical activity outperformed those children who watched television for the same amount of time. Physical activity which is generally used as a break from academic learning time, post engagement effects of it includes better attention, increased on-task behaviours and improved academic performance. Teachers can offer physical activity breaks as part of a supplemental curriculum or simply as a way to reset student attention during a lesson. After-school physical activity programs have demonstrated the ability to improve cardiovascular endurance and this increase in aerobic fitness has been shown to mediate improvements in academic performance as well as the allocation of neural resources underlying performance on a working memory task.